By Brian Seigerman, TRIP, CPIA, VP & Sr. Sales Executive at Marshall+Sterling
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
If you’ve had a clean year with no major claims, no serious incidents, and drivers who qualify, you might expect your commercial auto renewal to look reasonable. Maybe even flat.
Then the quote arrives, and it’s up again, 10-15%, sometimes more.
And your broker doesn’t have a good explanation.
Key Takeaways
- U.S. commercial auto premiums have more than doubled over the past decade, driven by market forces, not individual fleet performance.
- Your rates go up even in a clean year because insurers are recovering losses across their entire commercial auto book.
- Three forces are driving the hard market: nuclear verdicts, sustained insurer losses, and driver shortage and qualification pressure.
- There are concrete strategies that move the needle: telematics and dash cam adoption, FMCSA score management, and captive participation for the right fleets.
- Understanding the market is the first step toward managing it, but most brokers never have this conversation.
Why Your Rates Keep Going Up Even in a Good Year
Most fleet operators assume their rates go up because of something their fleet did: a bad year, a claim, a driver incident. The frustrating truth is that’s rarely why.
U.S. commercial auto premiums have more than doubled over the past decade. That’s not caused by more vehicles on the road, but by losses, verdicts, and structural forces that affect every fleet in the country.
Most brokers never share this with their clients. We start every new client conversation with it — because we think you deserve to understand the market you’re operating in before we talk about your specific program.
Three Forces Driving the Hard Market
The commercial auto market has been in a sustained hard market for years. That means rates are rising not because of what any individual fleet is doing, but because of structural forces in the insurance industry itself. Here’s what’s actually happening:
Nuclear Verdicts
Jury awards in commercial vehicle liability cases have reached levels the industry has never seen. A single catastrophic accident can result in a $50 million, $100 million, or even higher jury verdict, and those verdicts raise rates for every fleet in that carrier’s book, not just the one involved in the accident.
This is sometimes called social inflation: the tendency of juries to hold commercial vehicle operators to increasingly high standards of accountability, resulting in settlements and verdicts that far exceed what actuarial models predicted. You may have had zero claims this year. But if another fleet in your carrier’s portfolio was hit with a nuclear verdict, you’re sharing in the cost.
Insurers Are Losing Money on Commercial Auto
When an insurer pays out more in claims than it collects in premiums, its loss ratio exceeds 100%, meaning it’s losing money on every policy it writes. Commercial auto has had sustained loss ratios above 100% for years.
Carriers recover through premium increases. Your renewal is part of how they try to get back to profitability. Even if your account is profitable for them individually, rate increases apply across the book, because the book as a whole is losing money.
Driver Shortage and Qualification Pressure
The commercial driving workforce is aging, harder to qualify under increasingly strict federal requirements, and more exposed to distracted driving risk than any previous generation. These factors increase the frequency and severity of accidents across the industry, and carriers price that risk into every policy they write.
Driver qualification issues are also directly tied to your FMCSA SAFER score, which affects your insurability and your pricing independently of your claims history. A fleet with driver qualification gaps pays more (sometimes significantly more) than a comparable fleet with a clean compliance record.
What You Cannot Control… and What You Can
You cannot opt out of the commercial auto market entirely. You cannot reverse nuclear verdict trends or fix insurer loss ratios. The hard market is a reality you operate in, not a problem you can solve.
But there are things within your control that meaningfully affect how the market prices your account… and most fleet operators aren’t fully using them.
Vehicle Technology
GPS tracking and dashcam data are the single most powerful tool available to fleet operators right now for improving their insurance positioning. Carriers reward it — some with explicit rate credits, others with more favorable underwriting decisions. If you’re running a fleet without telematics and dash cams, you’re paying a pricing penalty you don’t have to pay.
Beyond pricing, dashcam footage is increasingly your best defense in a nuclear verdict environment. Your ability to document what actually happened in an accident versus what the other party claims happened can be the difference between a manageable claim and a catastrophic one.
FMCSA Score Management
Your SAFER score tells carriers how you manage your fleet. Improving it proactively through better driver qualification, HOS compliance, and maintenance records reduces your risk profile and improves your standing with underwriters.
Most brokers don’t monitor this between renewals. A transportation specialist should be watching your score throughout the year, flagging issues before they affect your renewal, and using a strong score as a negotiating tool when going to market.
Captive Participation
For the best-managed fleets, a captive insurance structure is the most powerful long-term tool available. In a captive, your premium is tied to your own fleet’s performance, not the industry’s. Good years generate dividends rather than just renewal relief. You participate in the financial outcomes of your own risk management.
It’s not right for every fleet. But for operations with strong safety cultures, clean loss histories, and a willingness to invest in risk management, it’s the closest thing to escaping the traditional rate cycle that exists in this market.
The Broker Conversation You Should Be Having
The right broker doesn’t just send you a renewal invoice with a higher number and say “the market is tough.” They explain why your rates are moving, what forces are driving it, and what your specific options are for managing your total cost of risk over time.
That means bringing you the premium trend data. It means proactively reviewing your SAFER score. It means knowing which carriers want your account right now and how to present it. And it means having an honest conversation about whether your current program structure, whether it’s traditional market, captive, or something in between, is actually the right fit for where your fleet is today.
Most fleet operators have never had that conversation. That’s where we start.
Frequently Asked Questions About Commercial Auto Rate Increases
Because commercial auto insurance is priced based on the performance of an entire market, not just your individual account. Insurers are losing money on commercial auto industry-wide due to nuclear verdicts, rising claim severity, and driver-related losses across their entire book. They recover through rate increases applied across all policyholders, including accounts with clean loss histories.
Most years have seen sustained double-digit rate increases across the commercial auto market, with some classes of business experiencing higher increases depending on loss trends in their segment.
A nuclear verdict is a jury award in a liability case that far exceeds what actuarial models predicted, often $50 million or more in a commercial vehicle accident. These verdicts have become more common and larger over time. They directly increase the losses carriers pay out, which drives rate increases across their entire commercial auto book, including accounts that had nothing to do with the case.
Hard markets in commercial auto do eventually soften, but the timeline is uncertain and depends on factors outside any individual fleet’s control: carrier profitability trends, legislative changes around jury awards, and broader economic conditions. The more practical strategy is to focus on what you can control: FMCSA score, telematics and dash cam adoption, driver qualification, and program structure.
For most fleets, implementing or optimizing a vehicle technology program delivers the most immediate impact, both on pricing and on claims outcomes. Longer term, working with a transportation specialist broker who actively manages your account between renewals (not just at renewal) tends to produce meaningfully better outcomes than a transactional broker relationship.
Captive programs work best for fleets with strong safety cultures, clean loss histories, large fleets, and a willingness to make a capital contribution and engage actively with the program. They’re not right for every fleet, but for the right operation, they offer a fundamentally different economic relationship with insurance. We evaluate each fleet individually.
About the Author
Brian Seigerman, TRIP, CPIA, is a Vice President & Senior Sales Executive at Marshall+Sterling and a nationally recognized transportation & towing insurance specialist. He has been with Marshall+Sterling since 2012. Currently, he serves more than 500 transportation clients across over 45 states. Stephen holds a Transportation Risk & Insurance Professional (TRIP) designation. Stephen has been in the insurance business since 2012.
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